THE TOMBSTONES IN T H E T O W E R In the tower at St Mary Hill, fixed to the west wall, are three old tombstones with barely-legible inscriptions. If you look carefully at the one behind the ladder (take a torch and shine it across the stone) you will see the very faint outline of a cross, upside down. Look even more carefully and you will see that there are not one but three crosses, on a stepped base. Most medieval tombstones had a cross on them, and some have extra little crosses as decoration. But tombstones with three full-size crosses are very unusual, and all the ones we know of are in Glamorgan. There is one very like the St Mary Hill cross at Laleston, set into the chancel pavement. Another similar one is at Llangynwyd, against the west wall of the church. Tombstones in the Tower continued the good thief. The thief had not even from page 1 had time for repentance and There is one with a rather different confession: but he had recognised design at Margam, in the ruined choir Jesus and said ‘Remember me when of the abbey church. This one has you come to your kingdom’, and he been earthed over to protect it from had been promised ‘This day you will the elements, but it was photographed be with me in Paradise’. These were before it was covered. comforting words to be remembered So were these triple crosses in a tomb carving. just a local fashion, or do they have a One final puzzle. In M edieval deeper significance? The church at Churches of the Vale of Glamorgan, Llangynwyd was a famous pilgrimage Geoffrey Orrin said that the church at shrine in the Middle Ages. Pilgrims St Mary Hill had two floriated came from all over south Wales to see medieval tombstones in the tower - the great carving of the Crucifixion on elaborately decorated crosses like the the rood screen in the church. Poets ones at Llantwit Major and ( the PR people of their day) wrote Llanblethian. They are now nowhere about it. It was the monks of Margam to be found. The three crosses on the who looked after the shrine, and tombstone behind the ladder are very Laleston was on the main route to plain. The churchwarden has lived in Llangynwyd, the medieval road called St Mary Hill all her life and has no the Ffordd y Gyfraith. It is possible recollection of any other cross slabs. that the triple crosses reflect the Was Geoff Orrin making it up - design of the rood screen at surely not! He was very meticulous in Llangynwyd and that the carvings his fieldwork, but the tower at St there showed the two thieves as well Mary Hill is dark and the stones are as Christ on the cross. This would difficult to see. He may have been have been unusual, but some of the relying on an old description of the poems to the shrine do mention the church that mentioned the decorated thieves. tombstones. It is even possible that the But where does St Mary Hill crosses are on the backs of two of the fit into this? The church isn't really on stones in the tower, and that they were the road to anywhere. It is possible reused with new inscriptions in the that someone from St Mary Hill went seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. on a pilgrimage to Llangynwyd and People in the past were quite found it a life-changing experience, so comfortable with reusing tombstones. that it was commemorated on their The triple cross slab has two later grave. Or the triple crosses may have inscriptions on it - one round the edge a wider meaning. Late medieval in seventeenth-century script religion was very much focused on commemorating a Hopkin Watkin and preparation for death. There were the second at the top (over the base of books of advice on the ‘good death', the cross) reading ‘Nest Hopkin dyed with pictures for those who couldn’t Feb ye 4th 1722 Aged 76’. read. These pictures warned you about Does anyone in the parish the temptations which could assail have any more information on these you on your deathbed, and showed intriguing stones? ways of dealing with them. One of the Simon Lloyd most dangerous temptations was despair: the picture showed little demons reminding the dying person of all their sins and saying things like ‘you have fallen’. Against this you were promised the help of saints who had made a mess of their lives and got back on track. St Mary Magdalen, the ‘sinful woman’ of the gospels; St Peter, who betrayed Christ; St Paul, who persecuted the early church; and